Autumn enters on summer’s coattails, making green leaves fade into vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows. The breeze is silken, cool against my fading black pelt, just enough so to spark alertness against the dragging afternoon. Only the toughest meadow flowers cling to life, an ill-fated attempt to exist far past their allotted time. I’ve found the meadow out of habit, a small clearing within the trees that I seek refuge from the others in. A place where the trills of larks are seldom, somewhere I can be alone with my thoughts.
A funny thing thoughts are, you’re the only one to hear them, if you choose not to say them aloud. Though still you remain susceptible to judgment from your own conscious, it’s a lose-lose situation if I ever knew one. I barely conceal the errant things that touch my mind and sometimes I don’t even bother, unable to stand the concentration it takes. So many secrets clog my brain and burn against the back of my eyes as they demand to be spilled. A constant struggle is raged within me, I want to be good to my home the Gates, to serve it.
Mother, though the timid, tractable creature she was, needed protecting. I would do that for her, keep her safe, our home safe if I could nothing else. Our relationship is rocky but I love her, even if I can’t express it well. She has the best intentions, as most like her do, and I try not to fault her for her shortcomings. But I do-I do so many things I should not.
The Congregation doesn’t understand me, not really, mostly because I won’t let them. I shuffle idly through the tall grass, tall enough to brush my barrel. Today my ears ring, the sound fading in and out as I find a place to lay down.
COTY
Assailant -- Year 226
QOTY
"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura